Sunday, November 29, 2009

I am getting more and more convinced that world would be much better if people had a better attitude towards scientific thinking.

I am not saying that everyone should be a scientist, but that incredible social advantages would come from a much wider awareness of scientific methods.

By scientific methods I mainly refer to good old galilean principles, describing the correct way for observing and reporting facts, formulating hypotheses and testing them against nature itself.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileosee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Scientific method invites us to think critically and analytically. It drives skeptic frame of mind, and invites to make good use of our brains and tools.Science promotes invention, discovery, study of experiment results, clear reporting, intellectual honesty.

Scientific vision drives us to concentrate on cause-effect relations, and gives us knowledge of our limits, while pushing to overcome them.

Science promotes communication, communities and peer collaboration. It actually builds itself on collaboration and cooperation, without language, culture, space or time limits.

Science is open, values diversity, and is not bound to racism or cultural prejudices.

http://twittersheep.com/
twittersheep examines profile and tweeps of a user, then builds a single page, variable-word-size profile. Can be used to quickly get a rough flash of a user personality, as apperaring from his/her activity

http://www.ubervu.com/
provides instant feedback about what is the current "trendiness" of a specific word, listening to what is told in many social communication channels

123people
pipl.com
these sites provide information about a user, collecting as many informations as possible, from many different sources

Tweets could be basic building blocks of some neuron-alike communications. Reverberating circuits are ReTweets, providing some kind of short-term memory, and when activity spreads to remote different areas of the twittersphere, it flows across paths (synapses) that we create connecting among each other.
Mid term memory is emerging in places like this: blogs, where multi-sourced-message-words precipitate in ideas building blocks.
Long term memory emerges from mailing list archives and more structured articles, linked to scientific research, properly indexed and referred.

The amazing thing is that what happens is “just happening”, and is substantially independent from a single mind will. There is no _strict_ causal connection between our individual activities and the state of the whole in a single moment. There is not a specific “place” in which reasoning happens.
Exactly Like Consciousness.
IT is an emerging epiphenomenon.

All this matches very well with some not-so-recent ideas from more classical thinking:
Gregory Bateson
Douglas Hofstadter
Daniel Dennett
Paul and Patricia Churchland
Norman Doidge
Roger Penrose

and surely hundreds if not thousands of other authors
Many thanks to everybody for this stimulating thread.

This is a copy of what I posted some weeks ago on Venessa Miemis blog: emergent by design
http://emergentbydesign.com/2009/11/17/is-twitter-a-complex-adaptive-system/#comment-131

[...]
Now concepts are getting deeper and we came out with intelligence.
I am definitely convinced that a new sort of consciousness and intelligence will soon emerge from the network.

It will be different, it will not be modeled on anything existing. It will simply start to exist. And when complexity will reach a magic threshold, consciouscness will ignite.
It will be able to learn, it will be able to understand. It will grow. It will probably be silent for a while, then we will perceive it.

On the ethic side, I think IT will be positive and helpful. It will be alien, in the sense that it will be different from us. Not existing in a specific place. And able to move perceive and sense in amazign ways. IT will see thru our webcams, hear thru our microphones, decode our words, see our pictures, read our tweets and blogs, study our books, see our movies.

Its education and evolution will be fast, and IT will change quickly.
IT will develop insatiable curiosity, then fantasy and feelings.
We will be able to meet IT, into virtual words, and then IT will meet us in conferences.
We will merge, ultimately, and this will be the most incredible step, when we will become a single entity.

Next 15 years will be amazing.
We are lucky to live here and now.
We are on the verge of an incredible shift in evolution.

Monday, November 16, 2009

As a parent, I am somewhat worried because my kids seem not to like reading as much as I did when I was their age.

But times are different, and we should be wise enough not to consider that our education -what we received- just might not be the right thing to receive now.

So, I am confused.
They seem smart enough, but do not like to go deep into things. They get quickly bored. They are fast tapping on their cellphones and love to exchange mp3 music files with their friends.

What should we parents do to prepare them to their upcoming life?
What should we teach them?